A Fairy Tale Ending

In the last 30 years, Ben Stevenson’s irredeemably mediocre full-length “Cinderella” has become familiar enough in America that it’s a waste of time for audiences and critics to continually bemoan its inadequacies. What’s important is that American Ballet Theatre looked like an overtaxed regional company when dancing it three years ago at the Los Angeles Music Center, but a very different ABT began a weeklong “Cinderella” engagement on Tuesday at the Orange County Performing Arts Center.

Don’t expect a Christmas miracle: Even the millennial Ballet Theatre can’t give Stevenson’s choreography any vestige of imagination, musicality or a distinctive sense of style. But what the company now provides is a kind of superior surrogate experience: The best performances don’t so much interpret Stevenson’s “Cinderella” as utterly replace it.

Consider the first of five pairs of dancers cast as Cinderella and her Prince this week in Costa Mesa: Julie Kent (she of the daintiest feet that ever wore glass slippers) and Marcelo Gomes (he of the power-thighs and ardent partnering). In their two big duets, they step outside the frame of the story to dance straight-front, showpiece-style--and it’s thrilling.

Yes, of course, using expressive choreography solely as a pretext for personal display would be questionable in “Romeo and Juliet” or “Swan Lake,” but here--with no choreography to speak of--it allows these artists to break free and show us the skills they’ve spent their lives perfecting.

Kent’s lyrical refinement really blooms in these passages, and she even manages to deliver the final sequence of high-speed turns in her Act 2 solo without losing the ideal sweetness and softness she brings to the whole evening.

Because Stevenson’s version omits the sequence in which the Prince searches the world for the woman who fits the slipper, the role becomes very nearly a guest cameo, but Gomes dances it with exemplary warmth and nobility. Recently promoted to soloist, he doesn’t pace himself successfully in his own Act 2 solo, but his lapse of control at the end can’t eclipse his high achievement earlier.

Cast as his ever-attentive Jester, slipper-bearer, matchmaker and party MC, Joaquin De Luz exudes so much buoyancy and charm that it’s easy to overlook imperfect placements in the air and a rough termination or two.

As Cinderella’s stepsisters, corps members Brian Reeder and Vladislav Kalinin prove unfailingly energetic in their endless pratfalls and other pantomime excesses. However, in the ballroom solos, they dance with more focused fervor--Reeder with mock virtuosity, Kalinin with mock delicacy.

For genuine virtuosity and delicacy--as well as genuine femininity--the company cast the steely Sandra Brown as Autumn and the serene Anna Liceica as Winter in the rather underpopulated divertissement of the seasons that ends Act 1. Ekaterina Shelkanova also solos capably as Summer, but it’s Yan Chen as Spring who takes this choreographic weather report into glory with her majestic sense of line and freshness of execution.

Replacing the indisposed Gillian Murphy, the sunny, efficient Michele Wiles undertakes the limited duties of Cinderella’s Fairy Godmother with care and zest. Ethan Brown bumbles ceaselessly as Cinderella’s father.

Danced in traditional fairy-tale sets and costumes by David Walker, the production looked badly under-lit on Tuesday: It doesn’t matter whether ABT changes the backdrops for the seasons if you can’t really see them--or the costume colors.

Conducting the Pacific Symphony, Ormsby Wilkins respected the deep solemnity of Sergei Prokofiev’s score, and it wasn’t his fault if Stevenson’s approach didn’t match the composer’s: Of the many “Cinderella” ballets seen in the Southland during the past few decades, only Matthew Bourne’s has accounted for the mournful, contemporary quality of this music and made it the key to a unified production concept.

As a result, the American Ballet Theatre “Cinderella” is undercut from the start, but it comes alive when artists such as Kent, Gomes, De Luz and Chen dare to make themselves the whole show.

Forget the art of dance--it’s about the art of dancing, about making bricks without straw, and it’s quite a spectacle in itself.

* American Ballet Theatre performs “Cinderella” tonight at 8, Friday at 2 and 8 p.m. and Saturday at 2 and 8 p.m. in the Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. $12-$70. (714) 740-7878.